I went to the Appalachian mountains. I left 2 days ago. Just now, I found a tic in a crevice of my ear. It was alive, but wasn’t full of blood. It was still thin. I also don’t feel any bite marks.
I don’t know much about tics or Lyme’s disease. Is there anything I should do or watch out for?
Yeah, just watch for any signs of change in the region where it could have fed. Looking for things like redness and inflammation, discoloration, pain, tenderness, itching, etc etc. If you notice no outward symptoms you are probably fine. Most tick bites do not cause infection anyway.
- Search for more ticks. Places like behind the knees, bellybutton, armpits, and groin are favorite tick spots. Check everywhere on your body, including your scalp. Have someone check hard to see places for you, like your back.
- Make sure that the head of the tick is not still embedded in your ear. Have someone check for you.
- Try to identify the type of tick. Different ticks carry different diseases so knowing the type of tick can help you keep watch for symptoms and/or inform doctors if symptoms do develop. Lyme disease is the big one transmitted via ticks but it is not the only one.
- The fact that it wasn’t full of blood is a good sign. Breathe. You are going to be just fine. Know what symptoms to look for and try to not worry yourself.
It’s entirely possible the tick you found was still looking for a good place to dine. Obviously keep track of your scalp and where you found this one so you’re sure there are not others and you aren’t actually bit or anything. But 2 days after contact is kinda when they hunker down and start sucking so there’s a good chance you found it before the problems could happen.
Your local health department can probably test the tick for disease if you still have it. (At least mine does in my state). If not, there is pretty good success with early treatment: https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/pdfs/FS_TickBite.pdf
This is what I would do as well OP. Lyme ducks people up, so just like with rabies it’s worth testing. Barring that, monitor behind that ear closely for inflammation and irritation
If I were you I’d see a doctor. Assuming you picked it up two days ago, that is sufficient time for it to settle and bite. The fact that it was not engorged is not assurance that you weren’t bitten. Some people catch lyme and never show a rash, although that is uncommon.
Your doctor may prescribe an antibiotic as a preventative measure.
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If you feel the need to see a doctor, by all means do so. As someone who has spent several decades camping and have been bitten by multiple ticks in my lifetime, I would not worry to much about it unless you start to notice the symptoms of Lyme disease. The CDC recommends seeing a doctor if you develop a rash or fever within several weeks of a tick bite. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/removal/index.html
While it sounds like you’ve been pretty lucky, keep in mind that the prevalence of Lyme disease has grown significantly over the past few decades
Yes it has. Just to reiterate though, I am not saying a person should not visit a doctor. Everyone needs to to make their own health decisions and seeing a doctor certainly won’t cause any harm. I’m just passing along the info from the CDC.
Assuming you pulled the tick out properly and didn’t leave the head or mouth parts in there, pay attention for symptoms and not sure how it will manifest on the ear but typically a red ring around the bite indicates something you might want to take antibiotics for. The type of tick matters too, Lone Star Tick will give you STARRI but if you were in the mountains it was probably a deer tick which you’ll want to watch out for Lyme disease with. Fever is a common symptom.
Everyone’s talking about Lyme disease, but I got Alpha-Gal allergy from a lone star tick. I got sick AF for a long time before an allergist finally thought to test me. I never had a tick that I let swell up with blood. A mere bite can get you.
That’s fascinating. Can you eat red meat now? I read that some people can go back to eating whatever after a couple years
Nope. It’s not just red meat either. It’s all mammal products and some kinds of seaweed. So no gelatin or carrageenan, which means I have to have some medicines compounded.
@BackOnMyBS in Rhode Island we can call our Primary Care Physician and tell them we got bitten by a tick if it is within 72 hours. They will prescribe a dose of antibiotics over the phone. Then again we live in a Lyme disease hotspot, so your mileage may very.
Do you still have the tick? The best thing to do is Google search for a service that you can mail in or drop off the tick. They will identify the type of tick, as well as test for the diseases that ticks carry. If everything is negative then you’re good to go, but if it tests positive for something you can take that to your doctor.
I just went through this process a couple months ago. Found a tick that had definitely been attached for a few days which is easily long enough for a disease to be transmitted. Mailed the tick in, got the results in an email a few days later that everything was negative.
How big was it? Normal ticks don’t carry Lyme’s disease and are about the size of a pencil eraser. Deer ticks do carry Lyme disease and are much smaller, they are more like the tip of a pencil.
the body was about half a cm.
The fact that it had no blood in it is a sign that it likely wasn’t there long, so the odds of you obtaining a tick-borne disease are very low. A tick needs to be embedded for a decent length of time to really have any odds of spreading a disease (I’ve heard anywhere from 10-24 hours although this is likely affected by multiple factors), and even if embedded long enough, the odds are still pretty low.
Lyme disease is only carried by one genus of ticks that I’m aware of (Ixodes), so if you have a picture of the tick or remember what it looks like clearly enough, you can try to find out whether it was Ixodes or not. Even if it’s not Ixodes, other ticks can carry other types of tick-borne disease (Rocky Mountain fever, Ehrlichiosis, etc).
The only thing to keep an eye out at this point is to see if symptoms form. The main things you’re looking for are fever and/or rash/inflammation in the affected area. If you do get symptoms, it could also just be a regular infection, but nonetheless you should see a doctor and explain about the tick and when/where you might have gotten it. If there are symptoms, all that you’ll have to do generally is to go through a round of anti-biotics if you catch it quickly enough (usually more severe complications don’t start occuring til a couple weeks in).
Send it to TickReport for testing
As far as I know you don’t feel ticks biting, but I could be mistaken.
